From a letter to Cary written Friday, September 19, 1997
Dear Cary,
Hi, Cary, it's late on Friday night, here in Providence, and I wanted to send you a note. I wanted to let you know that I have been thinking of you a great deal in the past months since I found out about your illness. I am sure that I think about you every day, if at least for just a moment, but often much longer. Whenever I think of you, I think of the friend and mentor you have been for me since my birth. I always think of you as a man who somehow knows EVERYTHING. Indeed, I have always felt that way. Somehow you always knew some obscure fact or reference to almost anything. I remember, also, how you always spoke to me as though I knew those things as well. Even when I was only four or five years old, I remember you explaining concepts to me as though I too, were a CalTech graduate. When I was much younger this almost upset me. It was not so much that it made me mad, but that it made me feel odd, in some way, that you weren't speaking to me as most of our family's friends would -- they would treat me as a cute child or something. I later came to realize that you were speaking to me in a manner which recognized where I was, or could be, intellectually. I later became very appreciative of this respect. Indeed, you have never let me take the road less traveled in conversation.
I remember this detail, even in a conversation regarding the Sega Saturn, or the Quadra 840AV (you told me to wait for the PPC)-- silly things in and of themselves, but important in that you made me question what was being heralded as incredible feats of technology, and that I should not come to decisions lightly. That I should look into what people said, and that I should not accept their claims until I found out the truth behind their statements on my own. Granted, computer purchasing decisions are quite trivial, however the greater message you sent was truly applicable to all things.
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I also want to thank you again for all of the great things you have done for me recently. For example, all of the passes to MacWorld shows with my father and, more recently, the show last summer in Boston, where, unfortunately, we missed each other. I thought it was so nice that you were able to get passes for my friends. Both of them still ask about you, and send their love. Most of all, I want to thank you for being such a close, caring friend of my father's for all of these years, and thank you for being such a close part of our whole family.
All my Love, Always,
Alex Aranovich